ALBANY — For each month of the college basketball season, University at Albany coach Katie Abrahamson-Henderson has created a slogan meant to be a new, updated motivational device for her women's team at each flip of the calendar.

The current month's slogan is "Making Madness," and when the SEFCU Arena crowd of several hundred supporters rose to give the Great Danes a standing ovation as the final seconds ticked off on UAlbany's 60-49 victory over Stony Brook, they might not have been aware of the March motto. But they did recognize that they were witnessing the making of something special.

Saturday's outcome completed a perfect league season for the Danes, the 16-0 mark just the seventh for any America East team since the women's conference began play in 1984. It was also UAlbany's first regular-season title since joining the league for the 2000-01 season.

"It feels good to be 16-0, and I don't know if it has truly hit me yet," said Albany senior guard Ebone Henry, a strong contender for the league's Player of the Year award. "I know for the three of us (seniors), who came here as freshmen ... we were 4-12 in conference play our first year. To get to 16-0 three years after that is something special."

But not something Henry or her teammates plan to dwell on for long. "We have more goals," she said. "We're just really looking at things as one day at a time. We don't want this to be our greatest accomplishment this year."

That can still come. If the Danes (25-3 overall) can win the league's upcoming postseason tournament (UAlbany's first game is at 6 p.m. Friday when it hosts Maine at SEFCU Arena), they will advance to the NCAA Tournament for the second straight season.

To date, they have been nothing short of dominant against America East competition, having won their previous 15 league games by an average margin of 24.7 points.

The Danes nearly reached that average Saturday, holding a 56-35 edge with 6:50 remaining before the Seawolves (6-10 in league play, 14-15 overall) trimmed the lead down the stretch against mostly UAlbany reserves.

But Saturday's latest chapter of making madness didn't come without making the UAlbany coach a little irate.

Some strong Stony Brook play to start the second half cut Albany's 35-23 halftime lead to four, 35-31.

At that point, Abrahamson-Henderson called a timeout.

"We were playing a zone defense before that, and we switched to man-to-man to try to get some energy into our play," she said. "At that point we needed to wake up. It was a lot of yelling 'Let's go, let's go, let's go' "

The Danes heeded that advice, playing with noticeably more energy immediately afterwards, particularly on the defensive end.

Over the next nine minutes Albany held Stony Brook to 1-for-10 shooting, blocked three shots and forced seven Seawolves' turnovers over a stretch of 16 possessions.

After that the winners had a 56-35 lead with 6:50 left, enabling Abrahamson-Henderson to give her reserves considerable court time.

"We talked a lot this season about what goals the players wanted to accomplish," Abrahamson-Henderson said. "During the game we talked about whether we wanted to go out with a 15-1 league record, or if we wanted to finish it off. The players hung in there ... they wanted to finish off the regular season."

But the Danes know they're not finished yet. With the league tournament up next, the UAlbany women know there's more madness they can create this month.